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Down the garden path

I write as a partner of India in several important nuclear disarmament initiatives in the 1980s and 1890s. Good friends warn you when you are making a mistake. It is in that spirit that I say the following difficult words.

Indian government leaders have made a major mistake thinking the United States could be their battering ram to break out of their nuclear isolation. Although many illusions have been carefully cultivated, the final result will be an embarrassing failure. It is time for the leaders to look for face-saving ways out of this debacle.

Until recently, India was as articulate as any country in the international arena in pointing out and condemning the pronounced unilateralist tendencies in U.S. foreign policy since the advent of the Bush administration. So how has it failed to see that, for the rest of the world, the U.S.-India deal falls squarely into this unilateralist pattern — and thus will be rejected by many countries just as surely as the other unilateralist policies of the U.S.? If the U.S.-India deal could be pursued unilaterally, then whether or not a good idea, it could at least be implemented. But the deal depends, at the very least, on a universal absence of opposition in the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and, as I will show below, the 192-member Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). As anyone who has followed the lame 64-member Conference on Disarmament for the last decade can testify, consensus is a non-starter in the diplomatic world.

No one should be fooled by the fact that the deal appears to be progressing steadily to date — although even that might be a too-kind description. It is true that no NSG country has as yet openly declared an intention to stop the deal cold. It is clear that to do so would be to incur the united wrath of the U.S. and India, as well as a dozen other countries eager for nuclear reactor contracts. So for now the countries that oppose the deal are hoping that it will implode of its own accord. This way they would be spared the onerous task of stepping into the breach. But as soon as it becomes clear (if indeed it ever does) that the deal has reached the stage for action by the NSG, they will gird themselves and step forward.

Do not, however, expect direct resistance. The following logic could well lead to a more effective opposition than frontal opposition. Such is the nature of the trap India and the U.S. have set for themselves.

The fundamental issue that guarantees a veto is violation of Article I of the NPT. Countries that take their obligations under treaties seriously (unfortunately the U.S. is not one of them) will want strong assurances that peaceful nuclear commerce is not directly or indirectly benefiting a nuclear weapons programme. To many it is obvious that supplying foreign uranium for the peaceful programme frees up domestic supplies for the military programme. This goes against the spirit of Article I, which bans assistance that “in any way” assists in the acquisition of nuclear weapons by non-nuclear-weapon states. For some countries that will be reason enough to oppose the deal.

But many others will be taking a narrow interpretation of Article I — that is, direct assistance must be avoided. For them the key thing will be confidence that a true firewall has been erected between the peaceful and military programmes. As was learned in Iraq in the early 1990s, site-specific safeguard agreements are inadequate to that task. Thus, it will be essential to have several of the key elements of the so-called ‘Additional Protocol’ complementing the safeguard agreement. These countries will insist that there can be no action in the NSG until India and the IAEA have concluded all safeguard and Additional Protocol negotiations.

Already this sets up a contradiction with the U.S.-India deal. It would allow commerce to begin only after the site-specific safeguards are operational, but would leave the Additional Protocol out of the picture until it “enters into force.” This is one example of why the U.S. is precisely the wrong partner to help India overcome its isolation. The U.S. negotiators could not press India on this issue because the U.S. itself has yet to bring its Additional Protocol into force. This tempted the Indian government to score a point for sovereignty (and supposed equality with the U.S.) but the long-term effect is a collision course with the NSG.

The Additional Protocol comes in three flavours: one for nuclear-weapon states parties to the NPT; another for non-nuclear-weapon states parties to the NPT; and a third for neither of the above. NSG members will insist on seeing the Additional Protocol with India so that they can be sure that specialised equipment, specially trained personnel, and even specific designs and operating manuals are not transferred from the peaceful programme to the military programme. In short, a thorough Additional Protocol is a sine qua non for their confidence that the deal will not lead to violations of Article I.

This Additional Protocol cannot, therefore, look anything like the nuclear-weapon states’ Additional Protocols, which deal almost exclusively with export matters. India cannot expect to negotiate with the IAEA on an equal footing with the nuclear-weapon states where there is no pretence even of establishing a firewall between the peaceful and military programmes. If India forces this issue, it might succeed in getting its way with the IAEA, where a majority of the Board of Governors can help force the issue, but it will set itself up for a fall in the NSG, where any single member can veto it.

But it will not be necessary for any NSG member to use the veto, since it will have a much easier basis for opposition. If India wishes to be treated as a nuclear-weapon state, despite the fact that it does not qualify as such according to the definition given in the NPT (having tested a nuclear weapon before 1969), then the effect of the deal going through would be to create a de facto sixth nuclear weapon state. As such, this becomes a matter of direct concern to the non-nuclear-weapon states parties to the NPT, who have adhered to the treaty on the basis of there being only five recognised nuclear-weapon states. Thus, the NSG should not take any action until the NPT states parties have had a chance to consider these far-reaching implications of the U.S.-India deal.

The next opportunity for the NPT parties to take up this issue will be the 2010 NPT Review Conference. (Preparations are already under way for that conference, but those preparatory meetings have no power to take decisions on substantive matters.) The operative positions of the states parties are those adopted by consensus in 1995 and 2000, i.e., with the concurrence of the U.S. All of them flatly contradict the very premise of the U.S.-India deal. (So we see the ugly head of U.S. unilateralism rising again.) A nuclear-weapon-state-like Additional Protocol would require the NPT parties to agree that India should no longer be considered a non-nuclear-weapon state. And that would have to be done by consensus. Not very likely, to say the least.

The only alternative for action on the deal before 2010 would be to force the issue in the NSG. But that would certainly elicit several vetoes. This would wreck not only the NSG but also the NPT. It is unlikely that the U.S. would be willing to go down that road — even if the administration were willing, Congress would not let it. In short, India would be left standing alone at the altar.

If India wants to avoid this long-drawn-out, losing battle, it will need to agree to an Additional Protocol that is closer to a non-nuclear-weapon state’s Additional Protocol than a nuclear-weapon state’s. This would be a first indication of distancing itself from the U.S. unilateralist approach. It is a necessary condition for going forward multilaterally with the deal, but not a sufficient condition. To satisfy all NSG states, India would have to further distance itself from its erstwhile sponsor by signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

The U.S. signed the CTBT in 1996 but has since declared that it has no intention of ratifying it, thereby creating an obstacle to the treaty’s entry into force. The vast majority of NSG members have not merely signed but have also ratified the treaty. They will not accept a deal in which resumed testing is not only condoned but there are special contingency plans to assist the testing nation. Again, in the absence of strong assurances to the contrary, they will defer the matter to the NPT Review Conference, which has a longstanding stake in the CTBT.

It is not for me to decide for India whether concessions on the Additional Protocol and nuclear testing would be wise — although I have no doubts they are. I am only describing what lies ahead. Good leadership looks as far down the road as possible to anticipate obstacles and detours. A combination of U.S. and Indian hubris has led India down the garden path without any clear strategy for reaching the ultimate destination other than economic enticements and intimidation.

There will be a natural urge to find a scapegoat for this. The obvious candidate will be the countries that ultimately stand up and say, ‘No.’ Before you vent your frustrations on these countries, reflect for a minute. India’s longstanding criticism of the NPT was that it accorded mainly privileges to the designated nuclear-weapon states and mainly obligations to the non-nuclear-weapon states. These courageous countries are just resisting a yet more discriminatory nonproliferation regime. You cannot in good conscience blame them.

India has a profound heritage of progressive leadership. That leadership used multilateral fora to advance global security concerns. Let us hope that this recent flirtation with ‘great power’ unilateralism is soon looked back upon as a brief aberration.

(Aaron Tovish, a disarmament expert, is former Director of Peace and Security Programs with Parliamentarians for Global Action in the 1980s and 1990s. He worked closely with Indian government officials on two major arms control initiatives: the Six Nation Peace Initiative and the Partial Test Ban Treaty Amendment. He now works for the Mayor of Hiroshima, President of Mayors for Peace, and is responsible for the main activity of the organisation: the 2020 Vision Campaign, which is akin to the Rajiv Gandhi Peace Plan. The opinions expressed in this article are his own.)

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